Why you should do usability testing

January 28 2010

I recently completed my first usability test and while it wasn’t very
rigorous, it definitely opened up my eyes to how much feedback can be
gained in such a short period of time. This became even more evident
when showing results to the clients (designer team) who were
over-confident in their ability to produce easy to use products.

I feel the process of usability testing can be summed up in these four five steps:

Watch someone use your product

Take note of any issues they have

Reward/de-brief the participant for their time

Fix the usability problems encountered

Go to step 1

While usability testing has been defined and re-defined numerous
times, the basic principle is simple: you watch people use your
product. Coming from a development background I found this hard to
swallow as I was of the opinion that people should use (and test) the
product when it’s finished. I was regularly doing app-based unit
testing to make sure that the core logic was always working as
expected, but I didn’t think that giving an incomplete experience
would at all benefit the final outcome.

Testing on a budget

Having recently read Steve Krug’s
Don’t Make Me Think, I opted for
a DIY approach to testing. The project was around mid-way through
design and implementation and due to the overall complexity involved
in the product I felt that a usability test would be wise before
moving forwards. Being a member of the development team I found it
easy enough to take notes and explain them to the relevant team
members for improvement.

The test format was fairly simple. Three individuals were gathered who
had no previous history or knowledge of the product. They were each
(separately) sat down in a room with myself infront of a
computer. They would use the product (an application) and would be
asked to complete a series of tasks and give a play-by-play commentary
on what they’re doing and thinking. For the purposes of this test, a
set of ten common tasks were set as the base-line to make testing fair
amongst the different participants. In case you were wondering,
Silverback was used as the recorder.

Why was it useful?

After voicing my concerns about possible difficulties in using the UI,
my opinions were shot down as I wasn’t the target audience. Having
completed the usability test one thing was made blindingly clear to
the design team: their core concepts weren’t easy to
understand. Despite some features being unexpectedly beneficial to the
test participants the core of the design had basic problems, which
luckily could be dealt with this early on.

Initial reaction was frustration and anger, given the shear amount of
time that was spent on this app, however within a short while it
became a competition to see who could spot further issues to do with
speed and sight when going back over the test videos.

I can happily confirm that the team I worked with in creating this
application have been more than happy with my thoughts and findings on
usability testing. So much so in fact, that they’ve made it a weekly
occurrence! Participants are dragged in from all areas and rewarded
with vouchers and free food. The money spent on them clearly outweighs
the lost sales and man hours that would occur when attempting to do
changes last minute or after release.

If you haven’t done any usability test yet, what are you waiting for?
The cost incurred for the above was around £30 total (Silverback was
used while still on a trial license) and the benefits to the business
were a great deal more than that. Happy testing.